Interesting People mailing list archives
Re: ARPANET history
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 09:18:20 -0800
________________________________________ From: Dan Doernberg [dan () fairness com] Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2008 10:56 AM To: David Farber Subject: ARPANET history Dave, Following up on the ARPA history discussion, I think the list might be interested in Peter Salus' new collection of ARPANET primary source documents "The ARPANET Sourcebook: The Unpublished Foundations of the Internet" (disclosure--- published by my company a few weeks ago). An overview is given below; more information is at <http:// www.peerllc.com/content/view/15/43>. Dan Doernberg Publisher, Peer-to-Peer Communications LLC dan () peerllc com http://www.peerllc.com //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /////////// "The ARPANET Sourcebook: The Unpublished Foundations of the Internet" reproduces the seminal papers, reports, and RFCs that led to the birth of modern network computing. Most appear here in book form for the first time. Part A, "Imagining the ARPANET", covers the initial studies of network feasibility and includes: * The introductory and concluding chapters of Paul Baran's seminal RAND research report "On Distributed Communications" in which packet switching was first conceptualized. * The classic 1968 paper "The Computer as a Communication Device" by J.C.R. Licklider and Robert Taylor, respectively the ARPANET's earliest proponent and the ARPA administrator who pushed the development project. Part B, "Planning the ARPANET" includes: * Scans of the first 18 RFCs, some publicly available here for the first time (the handwriting was too poor to be transcribed for the online repository). Also included is RFC 51 which anticipated Java by 20 years. * The 1968 ARPA-commissioned SRI study by Elmer Shapiro that modeled a heterogeneous network and concluded that it was indeed feasible. * Retrospective forewords by Steve Crocker (author of RFC #1) and Leonard Kleinrock (noted author and head of the UCLA computing lab that hosted the first ARPANET node). Part C, "Building the ARPANET", reproduces the quarterly technical reports from the government's contractor Bolt Beranek and Newman; they contemporaneously describe the development group's progress, difficulties encountered, and final success. Dave Walden, former BBN VP and a key member of the ARPANET team, has contributed a retrospective Foreword. A historical overview by Peter Salus and some reprints from "Matrix News" are also noteworthy. The book is dedicated to the memory of Jon Postel. ---------------- Peter H. Salus (Editor) has served as Executive Director of USENIX and The Sun User Group and Vice President of the Free Software Foundation. He was Managing Editor of the journal "Computing Systems" from 1987-98 and is the author of several histories, including "Casting the Net: From ARPANET to Internet and Beyond" (Addison- Wesley, 1995). ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Current thread:
- Re: ARPANET history David Farber (Feb 13)